Living in Disconnection

Over and over and over again on this trip we saw extreme poverty and wealth side by side. How could these two things exist in such a proximity? What has happened to us as a society that makes people live in complacency to this? Are they really complacent? Our reality has been manufactured into a place where the masses suffer while an elite exclusive few prosper. In this essay I hope to define the factors that have contributed to this contrasting pairing here in the Philippines and how that contributes to Filipino and Filipino American Identity.

            American imperialism and the ideals born out of those conquests have been forced on the Philippines. In 1898 President McKinley issued the Benevolent Assimilation Proclamation. In that proclamation the Americans stated “We come not as invaders or conquerors, but as friends… The mission of the US is Benevolent Assimilation (Zinn, 2008).” The Benevolent Assimilation Proclamation was a tactic to conceal American imperialist efforts. Americans wanted to distance and differentiate themselves from the Spanish colonizers who had occupied the archipelago before them for 400 years. The Spanish brought, among many other things, Catholicism. The Americans, bumbling in their “benevolence” introduced public education.

            In bringing public education to the Philippines the United States hoped to bring Filipinos out of the darkness and groom them for democratic governance. Connections can be drawn between tutelage employed in the Philippines and in the United States. In the United States, the American government used education as a mechanism for settling those indigenous people that had made their lives there before conquest. In her article, To Change the World: The Use of American Indian Education in the Philippines (2007), Paulet reaffirms the notion that education was utilized in order to pacify the people, or rather, to ward off notions of resistance. What we saw take place during the American colonization of the Philippines was that settling of peoples that in effect satiated the power hungry appetites of imperialism and capitalism. The effects caused by the deceptive use of friendship used during the Philippine American war still exist today.

            One example of Filipino resistance that is largely absent from Filipino and American history lessons is called Amigo Warfare. Amigo warfare as characterized in The Object of Colonial Desire (Illeto, 1998) has to do with Filipino rebels leveraging their friendship with the Americans by day and then utilizing the system at night to work on their own revolutionary endeavors. The US military fought back against Amigo Warfare with threats to burn down Filipino civilian homes and towns. It is both hypocritical and condescending that US military was upset with the Filipinos for engaging in Amigo Warfare because they were in fact engaging in a similar style of warfare. With support from the United States government they held the upper hand in establishing a framework out of the “Benevolent Assimilation Proclamation”. The United States took advantage of Filipino vulnerability, acting is if they were doing the citizens a favor by setting up public education.

            The American’s role in Filipino education has had a massive impact on current issues as we heard about from urban activist Susan Quimpo. Quimpo’s cuurent work aims to bring light to legacies left behind by the Marcos Dynasty of the 1980’s. one lingering legacy of the Marcos regime is it has become commonplace for historical revisionism to take place. Quimpo said she is partnering with other organizations around Manila to interrupt the cycle of historical revisionism by short informational and creative videos. In those videos she shares the true accounts of what took place during the Marcos dynasty and the enactment of Martial Law (Quimpo, 2016). 

The revision of the history of the Philippines can be contributed to American influence. Ileto states that the idea of burying the past took place during American colonization so that Filipinos would be further disconnect from their culture and their collective community that existed before colonialism. Another effect of burying the past and historical revisionism is that the colonizers hold the ability, and thus the power, to portray information any way that they wished.

United States influence in education has played a large part in implementing and perpetuating colonial mentality. Colonial Mentality takes place in a person or a community when they are formally and informally educated to embrace euro-centric cultural and traditional perspectives. In turn, people who live with colonial mentality feel shame, embarrassment, and/ or resentment for themselves, others with their shared identity and their culture (Andresen, 2013).

Writing from her experience as a women of color the contemporary poet Key Ballah touches on the subject wherein her ancestors, her history is waiting to be shared. She writes:

           

“I write stories using

my mother’s blood

and my father’s name.

My ancestors are lined up

in my mouth

waiting for a chance to speak.”

-Key Ballah

Meanwhile, speaking for from the experience of a white women McIntosh (1998) explains how most white people, especially men- people who experience privilege on the basis of gender, tend to spend the majority of their lives in state that lifts them up instead of pushing them down and out. Their histories, their experiences, are made much more visible than the narratives of those people that have been and continue to be oppressed. People who have lived with privilege and who haven’t been challenged by systems of oppression therefore are more and most likely to live with the ability to deny and minimize the experience of others. (McIntosh, 1988).

To challenge the legacies of oppression, opportunities need to be sought out at their intersections. Those intersections must be named by the people experience them themselves to avoid neo-liberalism solutions. Those solutions don’t tend to be equitable in terms of the process that they are created as they leave out the voices of those that they effect the most, and therefore the power isn’t actually shared or distributed more evenly. One strategy to interrupt the cycles assimilation, disconnection, colonial mentality and oppression is through transformative education.

Transformative education is one wherein all students are allowed to explore their identity in positive capacity. In transformative educational efforts students are “less susceptible to stereotypes and colonial mentality while making themselves visible and viable parts of American curricula (Andresen, 2013).” We can see similar efforts throughout both Filipino and Filipino American communities with the utilization of Hip-Hop. According to Viola (2012]), “Hip-hop artists often speak “in active participation in practical life” revealing people’s preset needs for adequate food, shelter, and security. Furthermore, hip-hop is an important musical outlet that possesses the ability to leave a lasting imprint in the hearts and minds of the struggling (Viola, 2012). 

We can see that in curricula that is transformative and through musical outlets that Viola (2012) describes that pockets of resistance are forming throughout society. Individually too we can develop our own resistance and revolution against the lasting effects of colonialism that uphold systems of oppression. I would like to again reference the poet Key Ballah has written a poem concerning the notion of Self Love and it’s potential for revolution:

“Self Love IS a revolution.

Especially for women of colour.

when everything in this world tell you that you’re

not enough.

Believing that you are is fucking revolutionary.

Do not let someone else’s privilege convince you

that you are not amazing and brave and insighting

change through the act of loving who you are.

Perhaps in a perfect world there would be no need

for a revolution like this,

but when my four year old cousin is asking to

bleach her skin,

even not finding yourself repulsive is a victory

maybe for some people the colour of their skin

doesn’t make self love a personal revolution,

but every morning that I wake up no hating my

body

is a moment in time when I celebrate the end of a

life long war.

How can liberating your own body, not be

Revolutionary?”

-Key Ballah

As our program was wrapping up we discussed as a class what it takes for revolutions to take place, and something that I thought we missed out on was the importance the revolutionary act of love. Love for self allows us to be open and receptive to the stories of others and that allows us to start the process of solidarity. Solidarity is catalyst in the foundations of revolutions.

            Working in a group throughout this course opened up my eyes to diverse experiences. It helped teach me about the connections that not only Filipino and Native Americans hold, but all people who have struggled through systemic oppression and colonization. Conflict of course was part of the process of our group learning. As individual students live within different intersections of their identity, there were many moments where I would have to catch myself and think about where they were coming from with an opinion or experience. Those varying intersections although sometimes troublesome in communications were simultaneously opportunities for us to learn outside of ourselves.